Hundreds of residents north and west of Spokane were told to flee their homes after stiff, dry winds fanned wildfire flames throughout the region in eastern Washington state.

As of about 2 p.m. New York time Sunday, the Old Trails incident had consumed 3,619 acres, the Fairview fire just north of the city had grown to 981 acres, and the Autumn Lane fire had expanded to 3,346 acres, the Washington Department of Natural Resources said on its website.

The Old Trails fire has destroyed at least 640 structures over the weekend, the Spokesman-Review reported.

“Leave now! This may be your only notice,” an emergency alert warned residents. People “must leave now due to life-threatening conditions in your area!”

Emergency centers were set up at the Spokane Convention Center and at the local fairgrounds on Saturday night to handle residents with recreational vehicles and those who took their animals and pets with them, according to the city. Due to wind-driven smoke lowering visibility, residents to the north and west were told to stay at home unless they were fleeing the flames. The Spokane area is home to about 600,000 residents.

Governor Bob Ferguson said Sunday in a post on X that he spoke with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and will be requesting a federal emergency declaration to access federal funding.

For weeks, fires across the Pacific Northwest have burned thousands of acres and sent plumes of acrid smoke into the sky, causing air quality alerts throughout the area and further afield across the U.S. and Canada. Power has been shut off to residents around Spokane, as well as farther south, to prevent electric equipment from sparking wildfires, Avista Corp., which provides service to four states, said on its website. The company operates 2,300 miles (3,700 km) of transmission lines through the region.

Across Washington, more than 12,800 residents remain without power Sunday afternoon after reaching a peak of 17,600 residents in the morning, according to PowerOutage.com. More than 10,000 of those residents are located in Spokane County.

Ferguson declared a statewide emergency and an outdoor burn ban through September due to the ongoing drought, immediate weather conditions, and fires.

Elevated fire weather conditions will persist across eastern Washington and parts of 12 other states as dry winds sweep the area, the U.S. Storm Prediction Center said. Parts of Montana, Idaho, Utah and Wyoming face a critical, or level 2, risk of fires on Sunday.

In Spokane, temperatures were forecast to reach 78F (25.5C) Sunday with winds gusting up to 21 miles (34 km) per hour and smoke filling the skies, the National Weather Service said.

There are currently 10 large fires around Washington and through July 29, 1,038 blazes had burned 426,666 acres, according to the state’s Department of Natural Resources website.

An area roughly half the size of Rhode Island has burned so far this year, Dave Upthegrove, Washington’s commissioner of public lands, said in a statement on Friday. Crews from 14 states as well as Australia have been fighting the blazes along with troops from the Washington National Guard troops.

“As a state, we’ve already hit the fifth largest amount of acres burned this century,” Upthegrove said.

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(With assistance from María Paula Mijares Torres.)

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